How Lando Norris’s F1 dad aims to get racing paddocks really moving

Entrepreneur Adam Norris – who made his fortune running Britain’s biggest pension company – is the founder of Pure Electric, an e-scooter business that he created after Lando signed his first F1 contract with McLaren.

With his son being well looked after by one of the sport’s greatest teams, Norris Sr felt he needed another passion project to get behind.

“Until McLaren, looking after Lando was a five days a week job,” he told Motorsport.com. “I’d then spend one day at work and one at home, it really was that relentless. Dealing with the teams and all the financial stuff was a really busy time.

“But, when he signed for McLaren, it was very much ‘here you go!’ and step back. The original mission was ‘will he survive in F1?’ and he’s so settled there now.

“I still go to quite a few of the races, but they’re such a competent team that they don’t need me, so my five to six days a week is now on this project.”

Pure produces what he feels is a revolutionary new range of e-scooters, aimed with different needs and prices in mind. And it was his exposure to racing paddocks, while Lando was climbing the ranks towards F1, that gave Adam the idea to build a company around the requirement of getting from A-to-B over a distance efficiently with zero emissions.

Not only that, the motorsport world was also a perfect market for his innovative company’s products as well as their inspiration. Much like Lando himself, the e-scooters are compact and pretty nippy.

“We’ve just had an order for 20 from one Le Mans team, and 10 from another,” he said. “I look back on the days with Lando in paddocks from karting all the way through to F1, and they were such good fun times, with great people.

“But getting around a big space like Silverstone as a competitor can feel like a nightmare sometimes, when the pits can be half a mile away from your paddock. When Lando did the Daytona 24 Hours, we were travelling miles from the car park to the pit lane or RV or wherever.

“Motorsport and horse riding [a sphere where Lando’s sister participates] are events where you have huge, spread-out events where people need to cover some ground to get around. It’s a complete coincidence, but motorsport is the number one place we’re selling product in sports right now.

“What it’s great is that you can fold our product up, put it in the back of your…